LINGUIST List 5.847

Tue 26 Jul 1994

Qs: Bilabial click, Prosody, Knowledge base, Jabo, Hypercard

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Query: Bilabial Click
2. Virginia LoCastro, question
3. Maria Milosavljevic, NL interface to a Knowledge Base?
4. , Query: Jabo (Liberia) reference
5. , Q: Where to find a Hypercard language-learning stack?

I would like to collect any and all references to the bilabial
click.

26July 1994

Dear Linguist,

I'd like to know if anyone has any information on research being done on
intonation and other prosodic features and politeness and degress of
directness and indirectness. I am especially interested in how intonation
contours which do not meet native speaker expectations (of any language)
cause the native speaker to perceive the non-native speaker as impolite,
rude, etc. Please respond via my e-mail address.

Thank you.

Virginia LoCastro
Virginia LoCastro
International Christian University
3-10-2 Osawa
Mitaka, Tokyo 181 Japan
(locastroicu.ac.jp)

I am interested to know of anyone who has written a NL interface
to a Knowledge Base. That is, the user (non-technical) enters or
modifies rules/conditions in natural language, which are picked up
& made into rules for a KB to be used for other purposes. These
rules could state limits, values, properties or relationships of
some objects/entities. This could be done with or without a set
grammar, etc.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance,

Maria

======================================================================
Maria Milosavljevic
CSIRO Division of Information Technology Knowledge-Based Systems
Building E6B Macquarie University Campus
Locked Bag 17, NORTH RYDE, NSW 2113, AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 325 3146
E-Mail: mariamsyd.dit.csiro.au Fax: +61 2 325 3101

 "We, my lords, may thank heaven that we have something
 better than our brains to depend upon."
 -- Earl of Chesterfield

Can anyone help me verify and complete the following citation:

 Walker, Kaye, et al. Beginning Jabo.

Is the senior author Kaye Walker or does this refer to two people (perhaps)
one of them is Jonathan Kaye)? What's the publisher, etc.?

 This work is apparently a teaching grammar for Jabo, the language
described by Edward Sapir in 1931 as "Gweabo". I'm preparing editorial
commentary on this piece for the Collected Works of Edward Sapir, and I
would like to be able to mention recent linguistic work. Any other references
on the language would also be very welcome.

 Many thanks.
 Judith T. Irvine

I'm looking for a Hypercard stack that provides some sort of language learning,
e.g., drills, vocabulary building, etc., preferably with sound. It can be
freeware, shareware, or a demo, so long as it is available for ftp somewhere
on the net.
My purpose is NOT to learn a language with the stack [...well, at least not
at this moment...] but rather to show some language teachers and other
humanists what might be done with Hypercard, should they choose to use or
author that scheme.
Thanks!
George Gale
ggalevax1.umkc.edu